Terry Sanderson on Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's speech

Here are the things he mentions:

Richard Dawkins (RealAudio) on the Today Programme, 9 May 2008, 07:17, BBC Radio 4

Love this guy. I wish more people would call the media on their slavering pandering to Rilijus Leaduhs. (Note that Dawkins has read CMC's speech; CMC did not listen to Dawkins's interview and has not read his book. CMC was the one who started this by mentioning Dawkins by name in his speech.)

Cormac Murphy-O'Connor (RealAudio) on the Today Programme, 9 May 2008, 08:10, BBC Radio 4

Humphrys still more or less lets him get away with "hitlerstalinhitlerstalinhelphelpoppression". Funny, too, that they advocate religious people camouflaging their message in not-overtly-religious language. Hello, ID creationism, didn't see you there!

You can still read CMC's speech here (at time of posting). There are a few doozies, but here's one:

God is not a fact in the world, as though God could be treated as one thing among other things to be empirically investigated, affirmed or denied on the basis of observation. Many who deny God's existence treat God in this way, and they simply don't know how to ask the proper question about God.

I'm annoyed when anyone, Christian, Zen or other, tells me I can't possibly reject something, because I don't understand it, and I don't understand it because it's not understandable, and therefore it exists because nyer nyer nyer. What a load of tripe. What insulting obfuscation. What pitiable, blind fools we unbelievers are. In any attempt to engage, we are doomed to straw man arguments because we don't respect the inherent unassailable incomprehensible specialness of the invisible magic friend/cosmic force.

Not quite all our fault, though. CMC goes on to admit that maybe the church is partly to blame for stuff it said in the past that might unfortunately have given the impression that they had a very clear idea of what the invisible magic friend is and what it wants. Their bad. We're to disregard all that. They don't really have any idea. Now we know that, we'll realise that atheism was invented in the 17th century because of that misunderstanding. But they'll generously pretend they never wrote all those flawed apologetics if we withdraw all our petty 17th-century cerebral objections to the ineffable magic friend, and none of us need say any more on the matter. Thanks, Cormac!

In conclusion, Faith in Britain might be improved by a deeper grasp of the mystery of God on the part of believers, so the correct attitude is that of robust, unrebuttable ignorance.

There's lots more. You may find this an amusing way to waste some of your lunch hour. I, however, am going to wander off and sing the Nuckelavee song.